Quick and efficient page indexing is an important part of running a website successfully. It shows that your site is ‘healthy’ and that your Google rankings are doing well. Besides, it lets you get your content and other pages visible in the shortest possible time! To help you get a leg up on the competition, we’ve put together a guide to getting Google to index your pages.
In this article, we cover the following guidelines:
- Page indexing control
- Different SEO tactics
- Link building
- Investing in backlinks
- Building a sitemap
- Running an ‘active’ site
Control which pages get indexed
Even though getting Google to index your pages should be your primary goal, sometimes, you do not actually want them to do it. This can happen when migrating your website to a new host and trying to fix up your SEO. If you have old content which no longer follows proper SEO rules, you would obviously prefer it if the pages are not crawled and counted against your SEO. Alternatively, you might post a backlink you don’t actually want to be associated with your site. There are two solutions to this.
- You can add commands to your Robots.txt file that prevent Google crawlers from reaching and indexing your page.
- There is the option of making a link nofollow. This means adding a tag to the link which signals to crawlers that you don’t want them visiting that particular page through that particular link.
Pick your SEO battle
Sites with better SEO receive more attention from Google, and that is just fact. This means that their pages are also crawled and, therefore, indexed much more quickly. If you are trying to push out content and use it to generate organic moving leads immediately, this is a very important metric. However, the question is: how do I make my site’s SEO better? Well, there are really three distinct SEO approaches.
White Hat SEO is typically considered “in accordance with search engine rules and regulations”, thus making it the best option possible. Simply because this SEO approach means appealing to an actual audience through content rich in properly integrated SEO. Grey Hat SEO walks that fine line between legislated SEO tactics (white hat) and shady SEO practices (black hat). Black Hat SEO is geared entirely towards fitting the requirements of Google’s algorithm, by any and all means, no matter how spammy and unappealing. Meaning its content is mostly just stuffed with keywords and text meant to trigger algorithms rather than engage audiences.
If your goal is to get your pages indexed and to ensure that they remain indexed long-term while actually having people engage them, then White Hat SEO is definitely the best path to pursue.
Build link connections
You see, the way Google crawls your website and indexes its pages is by following links from one to the next. This means that the only way to ensure that your website pages are indexed quickly and efficiently is to provide those links yourself. The simplest form of doing this is by providing your site with a menu with categories and then link to individual pages from there. In other words, tidying up your site and making an ordinary breakdown of pages. This is quite basic and inefficient, though, and it slows down the crawling process to have so few connections to follow.
Instead, you should do your best to provide a variety of topically related links on each of your pages. The experts on the topic associated with Movers Development particularly suggest using content pages for this. They allow you to cover a variety of different topics, after all.
Leverage backlinks
There is just one shortcut to getting Google to index your pages quickly and reliably. And it is available even to the smallest and newest sites! All you need to do is get a site with great Google rankings to feature your pages through backlinks. Now, admittedly, this is difficult since it requires connections and the better-performing site needs an incentive to actually do it. Still, it isn’t impossible if you pick potential backlink partners right.
A moving company that has just published a comprehensive website might be able to get a storage-based or similar business to provide a backlink to the mover’s instant moving quotes calculator, for example. It will be up to you to find reliable partners to exchange backlinks with and speed up the indexing of your site. Of course, both sides stand to benefit once your own site has grown a bit in this scenario!
Regulate your sitemap
One of the most basic requirements to get your website indexed by Google in the first place is having a sitemap. A sitemap makes your site and all its pages easily accessible to Google. This is why, even if your pages are not properly linked, it is possible for them to get crawled. It will just take comparative ages for the crawl to finish in contrast to a properly ‘linked’ site. Of course, your sitemap should be set up in such a way as to update automatically. This can be achieved relatively easily by installing the right plugins. Or, depending on what you are running your site on, it may even be a built-in feature. Even if the updating is not done automatically, you need to make sure your sitemap is always up to date.
Have an ‘active’ site
The final way of getting Google to index your pages is by keeping your site active. If Google statistics show that your site is regularly putting out quality content, then this will be marked down as a plus for you. Google will also pay more attention to your site and crawl it more regularly. Of course, some people take this to mean putting out as much content as quickly as possible. This can instead have the opposite effect.
Rather than just prioritizing the volume of content, Google pays a lot of attention to its quality, too, even past the requirements of SEO. Another metric you would hurt through this behavior is your reader engagement and the popularity of your content. Your content only really counts if statistics prove people are reading it and following your blog regularly. If they do, then Google is guaranteed to crawl your site more frequently.
Final considerations
Now that you’ve gone through our guide to getting Google to index your pages, you know what to do. Just remember: if you want to get your pages indexed consistently, then the quality of your site and its content is paramount. As long as you can keep it up, Google will have you covered. And if you run into trouble along the way, Movers Development is here to offer professional guidance. With our moving company SEO tactics, you can rest easy, knowing that all your web pages will be properly indexed and fully optimized for organic traffic. Give us a call today and let us help you grow your online presence.
